


15 After Zero

by Be_the_Spark



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Drama, F/F, Gen, Leotilda, Other, Sci-Fi, envisioned future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-07 02:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15209099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Be_the_Spark/pseuds/Be_the_Spark
Summary: I am Louisa Hawkins, and the world is at war. Humans are winning against the Green-Eyed Synthetics, but my father has a plan to turn the tide. But to succeed, he'll need my mother's superior coding savvy and her unfading love.And he'll need me. Because the very same Synthetic DNA that I feel has cursed me in some respects has also given me a gift. Fourteen is an unfair age with which to burden on someone the fate of two species, but if the people who brought me into this world would do it, then I will finish what they've started.





	1. Know My Name

**Author's Note:**

> A/N  
> This is the beginning of a somewhat canon-divergent future for Mattie and Leo's daughter. Louisa is still technically a child, who has somewhat unrealistic desires and fleeting fancies. But in many ways she also bears adult-like behaviors because the Synth compound in her brain has altered her neurological processes, so she understands and does things in a way no one else her age can.  
> Hope you can forgive the unorthodox telling of this tale and enjoy it!

_My name is Louisa Bell. I like football and electronica, and my favourite colour is red._

I recite these things like an actress, loud enough for a fly on the wall to hear, but not my mother. But even as I speak to the girl in the mirror, she mocks me with silence, her dark curls and hazel eyes stripping every word of it into a lie. Even the last bit – I doubt you’ll ever be so unfortunate to need to lie about your favourite colour.

But for me, the world is held together by a connected sharpness; the pitch of black, the blinding of white, and every vivid detail in between. There is no simple answer for anything.

Tension clenching my shoulders like claws, I close my eyes and allow my mind to run backwards in time. Memories flicker like brief commercials, until I settle upon one of Sophie Hawkins. Her medium-length hair is plaited back, displaying the silver chain around her neck – I’d given her the heart charm myself just before she left for university. With a wistful smile, she says, “This planet doesn’t need more people like me. It needs more like you.” Easy words for a girl who grew up like a flower under a sunbeam. I had about all the optimism of a lemon. And there isn’t enough sugar in the world for Sophie to sweeten that into lemonade.

I open my eyes to a bedroom that looks like the aftermath of a disaster film, surrounded by clothes that haven’t yet made it to the wash, and unlikely ever will. Household-cleaning Synthetics had stopped being manufactured altogether when I was seven. When the war hit its peak.

Mum reminds me it’s not safe to start attending school now. Some groups of Green-Eyed Synths are more radical than others, and I cannot speak against them or I will be in danger. I cannot speak for them, or I will be in danger.

“Lou?” Mum’s distant summons from the foyer is expected, as is what follows. “I’m not kidding around – if you want to stay home, feel free to just ignore me.”

Understandably, the situation has made her a bit terse. The news has never been easy on us, but when justice for Day Zero had at last been fully served two years ago, we’d needed to relocate to Bristol. In London, our name has spread like a virus through every district, and my last act before we moved away had been to temporarily paralyse a boy in another class that was organising a guerrilla-style revolt on a Synth army. Undoubtedly, here as Louisa Bell I would be commended for using my skill with pressure points to prevent tragedy. I would be famous as a holistic medicine practitioner rather than a crossbred creature.

“Louisa!”

I sigh, looking at the face in the mirror one more time. My father’s face.

My favorite colour is a prism. I like sharp objects and fire, and the sound of water crashing with the wind makes me feel alive. My name is Louisa Hawkins, and when I grow up I want people to know it.

 *** 

From Google Maps, Bristol looks largely like one large postcard-ready suburban utopia. Our neighbourhood seems to have sprung up out of a golf course. The school is a pile of neatly-stacked copper coloured bricks on a patch of black concrete. Mum sits in the driver’s seat of our parked compact car, shaking her head.

“What?” I ask her, ready to get out.

She mutters, “It looks like Waltringham.”

Waltringham, one of the earlier Synth free communities in England. Or as my grandmother calls it, Pleasantville 2020.

“Cool,” I say, blatantly nonchalant, opening the door with a click and a punch.

“Lulu?” I turn my head at the sound of my nickname. She uses it whenever she’s thinking about my father. But I know what she’s worried about.

I step out of the car and say, “I promise, Mum. I know what’s at stake this time.”

“Actually, I was gonna say…” she drew a breath. “It might not be worth it. You shouldn’t have to force yourself into this other person. It’s not healthy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I tell her, although I also want to laugh. Does anyone tell a chameleon not to change.

It’s only the third time we’ve been through this. Each year I make a mistake that pushes me further towards prison. And my father is not in prison anymore.

I can’t meet him if he doesn’t know where to find me.

I slam the car door shut and make my march toward Pleasantville 2.0.

 *** 

Contrary to my mother’s anxiety, the only fear I really had for today was being underdressed. I was expecting tidy jumpers and slacks, rather than biker jackets and jeans. Thankfully, I’m not entirely out of place here.

My classes run by quietly. Only when teacher announces discussion groups for current events does a knot in my stomach start stretching, waiting. We’re to choose a freestyle debate topic – an insane idea, really, as a band of fourteen-year olds might not grasp logic before passion in arguments better than some college kids can.

To my right, Owen is scribbling our ideas onto scrap paper. “New taxes. Continuing effects of Brexit. Copyright rules on fan-generated media.” He frowns. “No one’s gonna suggest resolution for the Green-Eye War?”

Well, I’d known that was coming. To be cool, I raise my eyebrows patronisingly and say, “I’d rather avoid starting a war in here.”

Clearly confused, Owen asks, “But who here’d want to side with the Synths?”

“You tell me, if you’re the one who wants to do a two-sided debate on it.”

“She’s got you in one, Owen,” says the girl on my left. Veronica. Striking, with dark red hair, and fair skin surrounding ruby lips and eyes as blue as a swimming pool. “Although, I don’t know why we’d rather spare this box of morons when anarchy is so much more fun.”

Her eyes catch mine, and she winks. And…I’m in love.

“Right, well because you said it,” sighs Owen, circling a topic. “Copyright issues it is. “Veronica will be on the side of the Internet, I’ll take on the concerns of the copyright - .”

She warns, “I will slaughter you.”

Showing no sign of fear, Owen then points at me, “Louisa, is it? You’ll play moderator.”

I twist my lips in frustration. I should be used to this designation as my former classmates refused to allow me more active participation, but still. New school, new rules.  “You reckon I’ll be better at listening to you both argue than having my own say?”

“What, you know right now already you’ll be good at this debate?” says Owen, pushing his glasses to the bridge of his nose. He stares at me in doubt.

“Probably. I’m good at everything.”

“Bully for you.” He groans, and then says to Veronica, “I suppose that’s the real debate right here.”

Veronica laughs, the sound bearing the carefree joy of a child. “Can you blame her though? You just went about putting us all in our places without any help.”

Looking as helpless as though Veronica paralysed him with pressure points herself, Owen snaps, “Okay. It’s Anarchy, 1 at Law and Order, 0. Little Miss Good-at-Everything gets to play the side of the copyright holders.” Then he leaves us to report our decision.

I smile sweetly in his direction and say in an undertone, “Such a nice guy.”

Veronica snorts at this. “You can take the position of the content creators. I don’t mind a challenge.”

“Neither do I,” I confess. And while her smile warms me, I also think,  _I have no experience with the subject. I’ve never done anything creative in my life._ In truth, I would be better moderating the debate between Veronica and Owen. But I hate it when my choices are made for me.

“By the way,” Veronica interrupts my thoughts. “That classroom war over the Synths? Already happened last year.”

I take care to ensure my tone is neutral before asking, “How did it end?”

Veronica smirks. “Bloody. About half of us wanted to crack down and use government resources to research a way to shut down all of their systems externally. Of course, there’s no telling how such a hack through that electronic network would affect other co-existing electronic networks. Your smart microwave could turn on and blow up your house!”

I shudder at this, but Veronica continues, “The rest of us, being the awesome freaks that we were, suggested looking for a truce with Leo Elster. Since, you know, he’s got some sway for all of it, being the son of the man that created them ,and the mastermind of Day Zero.”

Mastermind? There was no mastermind of Day Zero. Only a girl trying to save a Synth’s life, and later on a boy trying to save hers.

Does he have that much influence over the warring Synths, though? Doubtful, or there would be nothing to fight about now. But then, he’s only been out of prison for two years, thanks to my grandmother Laura’s strenuous efforts to get his sentenced reduced. For all I know, he could be starting a change.

I’ve never met Leo Elster. He was arrested before I was born. He claimed responsibility for delivering consciousness to every Synth on the planet so my mother didn’t have to. I’m not supposed to see him yet, not until Mum has deemed us safe. With who we are haunting our shadows, we’ll never be safe. Yet still, Veronica’s endorsement on his behalf makes me want to run out and find him. And maybe grab her by the arm and take her with me?

I want to say all this aloud and more. But with Owen returning, I shrug instead. “I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

Inwardly cringing from Veronica’s crestfallen expression, I open my notebook and write,  _Why Copywriters Should Negotiate a Truce –_

I stop, rereading what I’ve just jotted down.

Maybe Leo Elster can negotiate a truce. Or maybe I can. With him. Because with the girl sitting next to me as living proof that there are humans with goodwill towards conscious Synthetics, I realise I may be able to reach people in a way that he, closed off as he is, cannot.

Forget what Mum said. By the synthetic additive in my DNA, I’ll find my father all on my own.


	2. You're The Voice

Just for the record, I don’t believe there is any true redemption for humanity as a species. What little good it does will always be ruined by the tremendous bad. On a daily basis, I find myself torn between wanting to save the world and wanting to burn it to the ground. Mum meanwhile wants to have me checked for bipolar disorder.

“Louisa!” Veronica’s voice chimes my name pleasantly on my way to the bus after school. I look above rather than behind me, the airy warmth in the September sunlight trying to resonate a different message.  _Maybe humans aren’t wholly irredeemable._

Her school bag, a three-dimensional canvas of stickers and safety pins, swings and crashes against her as she races to my side. An idea is dancing in her bright blue eyes. “Grab some chips with me?”

On the one hand, Mum is covering the late shift tonight, her partner in tech support having gone into labour. I can be as late coming home as I want, which means I can track down Leo Elster after I hang out with Veronica.

We walk across the street together, my senses swimming in the smells and sounds mingling in the airs - sweet cheese and pretzel salt, the motors of passing cars, surrounding telephone chatter that tempted me to mock in front of Veronica.

The altogether lovely day, however, is ruined when a street musician, plucking the strings on his guitar, opens his mouth.

“ _We have the chance to turn the pages over_

_We can write what we want to write_

_We gotta make ends meet, before we get much older_

_We’re all someone’s daughter_

_We’re all someone’s son_

_How long can we look at each other_

_Down the barrel of a gun?”_

_Subtle_ , I think, initially amused. But when I move forward, Veronica exclaims, “Hey! This is a good one!”

Is it? I wouldn’t know. All music is to me is a headache when it’s poorly executed, and suggestive when it’s not. Like a hypnotist, it has the potential ability to alter moods and influence thoughts, and I have enough trouble figuring out how much of myself is real as it is.

But Veronica has latched on to my sleeve, and if I want to marry her one day I’ll have to get used to the things that she likes.

It isn’t until we’re sitting in the restaurant, dipping our basket of chips in various sauces in silence, that she finally says, “So, John Farnham. Not a fan?”

 _Who?_  I blink, but recover in time to avoid looking like an idiot. If I tell her I don’t know John Farhham, she may try to make me listen to him. If I tell her I don’t like John Farnham, she may turn against me. And if I tell her I don’t like music at all…

I am a chameleon. I can change just enough to impress the world, without them ever knowing how. But I don’t want to impress Veronica.

“I’m more into classical music,” I tell her, as honest as I can afford to be right now. The hands our friendship’s clock has already begun ticking steadily towards midnight.

Meanwhile, Veronica nods at me approvingly. “I should really get into more of that,” she smiles.

I can’t smile back.  _People don’t fall for each other within a single moment,_ I remind myself, chewing the potato stuffing out of its straw-shaped shell. She stares at me, and I wonder if there is a dull glaze in my eyes. I also have a complicated relationship with food – I don’t hate it, but I rather wish it wasn’t essential to survive. With the time it takes, the cost, and the sickness that comes from consuming too little or too much of it, I feel like it’s a bit of a curse.

Then Veronica shrugs halfheartedly to herself, and wipes the shine off her hands. “I want to find him.”

“John Farnham?” I say, suddenly questioning her sanity.

She laughs; again, it brings to mind a tone of innocence and joy. I wonder how long I can keep this up with her. Leaning in conspiratorially, her voice drops to a whisper. “Elster. I know he can make a difference, Louisa.”

All of the lightness inside of me plummets to the shadows. “What makes you think he isn’t trying now? That there’s just nothing he can effectively do.”

She nods, conceding wordlessly that I have a fair point. “But maybe he just can’t do it alone. No one can stop a war on their own.”

Even though she’s echoing my thoughts from earlier, hearing them through her now makes them seem like a very young thing to say. We are, at least biologically, only fourteen. I’m just probably the only one between us that remembers it.

***

When I was eleven, I had a friend who’d lost her grandfather to an accident caused on Day Zero. Although she’d never known him, she knew the hatred towards Synths well enough, passed on through family and friends. But she was a nice girl, doing her best to accept and include me in her life, until Leo Elster’s sentence was reduced, and I made the unforgiveable error of defending him in the face of her family’s grief. And with a shattering confrontation, she left.

Veronica is the opposite. Veronica would embrace me if she knew whose daughter I was.

 Veronica could also tell the world whose daughter I was.

 *** 

After I say goodbye to her, I board a bus that could connect to more buses that would eventually take me to York.

My mother packed enough notes in my satchel this morning to get me to Wales and back; this must be because after my eleven year old friend shut me out forever, I’d aimlessly hopped on a bus to Surrey, riding until all my money was spent. Say what you will about Matilda Hawkins, but she learned her lessons about being careless fifteen years ago.

I cough all the way during the last leg to York – someone had a smoke before getting on the bus. The lingering scent catches me by the nose as he takes the the seat behind me, and my eyes sting with unfeeling tears.

The sun is finally thinning outside like a halo, and I hope Leo will be charitable enough to drive the kid he’s never met back home. It was surprisingly easy to track him down – in this digital future age, with a little effort you can run a search and find out where your local postman lives.

But for someone as infamous as the Day Zero creator, all you really need is to look at the right message boards. With so many angry people knowing where he lives, it’s a miracle he’s still alive.

Still alive, and still in York.

The sky is fading to a deep grey while the bus bumps and rolls to an increasingly slower pace. What I see of York in this shadow of a day is clock towers and bridges, and from judging by the walls in the pictures I’d seen online, it looks like one of those closed-off cities all the nerds build online with their computers.

It’s been a long ride, and my feet complain about it as I flex them on the sidewalk the bus has just left me on. There is a band of five – maybe six – people further down the road, and while the car horns honk past me distractingly, I notice they are kicking something. A football?

But the rabble’s jeers and shouts are more aggressive than your usual game.

And no matter how hard you can kick them, footballs don’t leak blue fluid onto the pavement.

It feels like an icy fist has grabbed my lungs upon this realisation. It’s choking all the will and resolve I have to not be me.

_Don’t be me._

But would I rather live as a coward, or die as a hero?

I run into the mob, the screams of the abusers like burning like poison in my ears. A litter of Synthetic bodies, broken and spattered with a sickly blue, lay in a trail behind the men and women I face. There is only one left moving, and very soon he won’t be.

I watch him, his electric green eyes glitching with every blow he took. It might be too late to save him. But he looks younger than most Synthetic models. He looks like he could have been freshly graduated.

Screaming at the group of ten – more people are drawing towards us, like ants – I fail to turn any heads.

Next, I cup my hands over my mouth like a megaphone and shout, “Oi! Asshats! Muggles! Lend me your ear!”

If I wait one more second, this will all be for naught. And maybe I should give up. I’ve never properly known a Synth, it’s not my responsibility.  It’s not…unless it’s humanity’s responsibility in general. To care for what it has created, and protect it.

In the slow moments that are eating up this Synth’s life, I realise I could have found out so much by saving him.

I could know just how much separates me from him.  _Me from them. Me and them…_

When the slaughter stops and the dust settles, I am left staring at just another abandoned body. The icy fist in my lungs turns hot, and I sink to my knees. I have to keep it down, but the cry bubbling inside of me is being pulled by a hook.

His bright eyes are still blinking at me, even though I know he’s already dead. They ask me,  _why are you sad?_  They ask,  _why_   _didn’t you do more?_

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to him, before a hand brushes my shoulder. Using the back of my hand, I wipe my tears, succeeding only in making my whole face wet. Then, bracing myself, I look up at the man standing over me. Lanky, disheveled, and nothing like the selfies my mum had taken with him while they were together. The one thing that remains the same are the eyes – a clear, light blue that speak plainly of the tragic world he’s seen, one he’s doing all his best just to get by in.

 I say softly, “Hi Dad.”

Leo Elster stares at me a moment longer, then at the Synth I’ve been weeping over. He instructs quietly, “Help me get him up. We’ve got work to do.


	3. Humans Are Red, Synths Are Blue

My black boot heels scrape the grainy pavement in a rush to get inside. There is no avoiding it – no matter how swiftly night is falling upon us, the sight of Leo Elster dragging a dead Synth through town is going to bring out stares fiercer than the burning sun. I don’t know where we’re going, but from what I understand, if you want to survive among humans but remain within proximity to Synths, renting a flat on the town boundary line will bring you close enough to the forests, which they have taken over.

My father is gaunt, especially pale under the glow of slivered moon. He doesn’t speak to me, except to direct me occasionally with  _left_ or  _right._  Meanwhile, the Synth’s right arm makes a stiff, upside down L across my neck. He isn’t too heavy for me, but I’m also cursedly petite in comparison.

The town walls are within sight, we must be nearly there – but then the roll of cries begins, as high-pitched as opera and as incessant as a lawn mower. I wince at my twinging ears; I hear the words, “Play with your dollies in prison!” and “Go jump in a lake, Elster!”

Leo’s head does not turn, but I’d be happy to do so myself and deck who ever shouted that last blow. Telling someone who’s already drowned in a lake once to do it again is unforgivably redundant.

It turns out I am right about Leo living close to York’s walls. But I expected a proper flat, small, somewhat untidy. Maybe with an emo-looking cat inside. Instead, my father lives in a rusty shed, the size of Stonehenge in a box. When we reach it, he carefully slips out from under the dead Synth’s left arm to dig a small key out from his jeans. While he twists it into the padlock that chains the shed door to a drilled spike in the ground, he says without looking at me, “How’re you holding up with him there?”

My first impulse is to lie so that he’ll hurry up. Honestly, I barely feel weighted down. Not just by this Synth, but by objects in general. It’s one of the less irksome things about being me; I can grab as many books as I want from the library and Mum can get all of the groceries out of the car sooner. Of course, since I’m not allowed to show my freak flag to anyone outside of the safe home that she’s strived to create for me, I have to feign weakness.

And now, for once, I’m away from home and I don’t have to lie about it. Unfazed by my thoughtful silence, Leo, apparently already knowing the answer to the question before he asked it, pulled the door to the shed open and walked into a dark world smelling of paint and dirt. A bit apprehensive, I take slow steps forward, the Synth hanging on my back like a bulky cape of rocks. My father turns around – this time, he does look at me – and says gruffly, “Get him in here so I can turn on the light. And close the door,” he adds as I finish scuffling in. “No one can see what we’re doing.”

And what  _are_  we doing? I’ll admit, I haven’t thought so far ahead, as I’ve been in a rare state of shock for most of this day. It has briefly occurred to me that we might be honoring this Synth with a funeral.

This Synth…there were several Synths lying dead on the street from where we took him. We only took one. Why?

Compartmentalising, I hand the Synth off to Leo and do as he says. Once the giant glass bulb dangling from the ceiling is radiating a ghostly white light, I even take a dust-caked line of rope and tie it from the shed handle to a hook on each side.

Leo sees this and nods approvingly, and I look at what he’s done. The body is lying across a table, connected to a computer screen, flickering with coloured coding, stationed above his head. An experiment? Looking down at his subject, I hear an unintelligible curse muttered, and Leo snatches a large pair of shears from the ground behind him.

“Louisa.” I start, the thrill of proof that he knows my name instantly shot down by an order. “Take these, cut his clothes off.”

“What?” I can put up with a lot, but this is weird even for me.

He approaches me, holding out the shears at an angle. “We don’t have time. Just…trust me, okay?”

With a bobblehead’s nod, I accept the shears. An odd look in his eyes, he raises his hand, and it wavers above my hair. No sooner do I realise he’s aiming for an affectionate gesture than he withdraws it and walks away.

My heart sinks. I won’t cry, not for the second time in front of him. Willing my focus to take over, I begin with detachment to cut away the Synth’s khakis.

I remember what Mum says. Have I mentioned yet how he was barely a better boyfriend to her than he is a father to me? I’m not surprised. I’m not. I’m just…disappointed, all the same.

My hands smoothly guide the shear blades up the pant leg.  _This is alright,_  I think, until I draw near the more private area. An inexplicable chill touches me – a fear that spreads through my lungs like liquid nitrogen. I hadn’t noticed before, hadn’t put my hands around the legs deep enough, but they are protruding with metal splinters from the thigh down. They have stuck my hands, and now my fingers are smeared with red blood and the same, sick blue of a Synth’s.

I stare, horrified. “No.” I smell something foreign, chemical, like bleach and rubber and metal… _my head is high but my feet are down, my head is high but my feet are down._

Leo, who’d been assembling various tool for God knows what reason, looks back at me and yelps. As I shake feebly, my head spinning, he’s whipping a smudged white rag out of a box and running it over to a plastic jug of water. Once the cloth has been dampened and sprayed with a strong-smelling disinfectant soap, he comes over to me and begins roughly rubbing it over my hands.

It stings, and I unwillingly say, “Ow.”

“Sorry.” His eyes roam over me in concern for a pause, then he begins to clean my fingers more gently.

Three minutes later, my fingers are healed but my hands are still an ashy sort of blue. “It’s not coming off,” I quake in a whisper.

“It will,” he promises. He looks me in the eyes now, frowning slightly, as though I am a package he never sent for. “Do you…draw?”

I think I am in a permanent state of confusion with him. But he presses, “With markers? Like, Crayola?”

I shake my head. “The one time I did, I got the ink smeared all over my palms. I haven’t touched them since…”

Oh. I get it.

Giving an affirming nod, my father tells me, “Synth blood will wash completely off in give or take a few hours.”

I breathe freely again. It was such a big reaction for such a small thing, and he doesn’t judge me for it. He doesn’t even ask…

Leo turns back to the Synth. With a perplexing expression still on his face, he says, “I’ll take over. You can have a seat over there.” He flicks his head towards a broken mattress surrounded by wooden crates. Is that where he sleeps? He must read the alarmed look on my face as being residual trauma, because he now asks hesitantly, “Are you going to be okay?”

I nod, probably too many times to be convincing. But I move to the mattress and watch him work. Once the Synth’s clothes are cut off, and there’s nothing left but a nude, busted open android, Leo Elster does something else weird. No, it surpasses weird, because grabbing a pair of metal tweezers and pushing them back into the graft of a dead Synth’s skeletal structure is mental at the very least.  _Feel like asking him what he’s doing anytime soon?_  an unkind thought in my head voiced itself.

Almost as though he could hear it, Leo explains suddenly, “He’ll be charging in hibernation mode for a while.” Ducking his head around the light to put a dab of something that seems like silicone glue on the cuts, he goes on talking to me. “When he’s ninety percent he’ll need to be unplugged or it could risk short-circuiting him in this condition.”

Unable to go by without asking any longer, I shake my head. “He’s dead though. Why are you charging a dead Synth?”

Leo sighs, though whether it’s a patient or impatient sigh I have no idea at the minute; I don’t even know him at all. “He’s not going to be dead. I need to patch him up, activate his system, and upload the consci -.”

“Consciousness code,” I finish for him, jaw falling open. “You’re trying to bring him back?”

He was. And judging from his downcast countenance, I sense there’s more to it than to see if he can do it. No, the man I see has lost everything. Why wouldn’t he want to see if he can bring some of it back?

It is quiet for two minutes before Leo finally admits, “With all the Synths being wiped out in this war, it seems like they’ll all go extinct unless I figure this out. Who knows, maybe if they can be rebuilt and rebooted, humans will get tired of trying to kill them.”

 _Have you met any of them, Dad?_ I want to ask. But this is a rare moment of disclosure for him, and I know he’s doing it for my benefit.

And I hate to change this subject, but I need to know.

“Did Mum tell you?”

Leo stops applying skin packs to the Synth and puts the equipment aside.

“Tell me what?” he asks, sounding careful.

“About me. About my…sensitivity.”

His lips twitch in a manner that I think might be him trying to form a sad smile for me, but he is too sad even for that. Leo answers, “She wrote to me. Sent pictures. Occasionally asked for my advice, although I was hardly equipped to give any. And yes, she told me. How you feel like your universe is one huge allergy. Everything’s too loud, too bright, the taste of food makes you sick. You have a hard time processing these things because a Synth’s senses are enhanced. And because I did too.”

Am I really having this conversation? Because my mother, bless her, can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be me. And all along, she’s handled my affliction so well because my father told her how it worked.

“Thank you,” I say suddenly.

He blinks, confused. “For what?”

Instead of answering, I stand from the mattress and walk over to the table. “Did she also tell you,” I say very seriously, “that I want to be a doctor?”

And in a case of miracles at work, a small smile is pulled from Leo Elster’s lips. “Would you care to take on your first patient?”

As we begin to trade pliers and surgical knives back and forth, I notice that my fingers are no longer blue. They are no longer red. 

They are the result of it – a faint tint of violet


	4. Breaking Light

When I was eight, I’d once been standing on the front lawn, the crisp grass scent rising fresh from the shimmering green. My eyes were shut so that my skin could enjoy the drifting tickle of summer’s breeze. When they opened again, it was because there was a distant, tinny sound sharply poking my eardrums. I wandered off our property to look for its source, carrying with me nothing but a juice cup and a beaded twine friendship bracelet made by a no-longer-friend. I followed the sound down nearly two blocks before I found a chocolate-coloured hairball that wouldn’t have even been big enough for the seat of a tricycle. According to her collar, the shih tzu’s name was Ladybug, and to further induct me into the unfairness of life, she turned out to be a puppy with a broken leg.

Mum was frantic by the time I finally reappeared, then disheartened by the bundle wiggling weakly in my arms. But as she was calling both the owner and the local veterinarian, the whimpers Ladybug made in my room were setting my teeth on edge. Finally, I opened Mum’s computer and looked for tips on how to fix a broken leg.

It took me quite a few tries to get it right, but I was lucky enough that Mum didn’t notice me sneaking off to steal medicinal herbs from the kitchen. Using them to mildly sedate Ladybug, I found myself enjoying the method and precision of surgery. Even more, it was the pride – I hadn’t even lost all my baby teeth yet and I’d fixed a puppy all on my own.

Although I nearly broke apart saying goodbye to Ladybug in the end, that sure feeling of accomplishment stayed with me. Next Christmas, Mum bought me one of the games where the centerpiece was a cartoonish plastic figure of a man with odd places – the chest cavity, the limbs, intestines – emptied out and exposed to reveal miniscule objects trapped inside. The players of this game use a set of tweezers to remove the objects, being careful not to touch around certain, more precarious places, under a limited timeframe. Although I’m not convinced to this day that anyone else in the Hawkins family was trying to beat me, I won effortlessly.

So to love practicing the skills needed to become a physician, yet be burdened with an aversion to the touch and smell of everything that goes along with it is ironically cruel.

“Louisa?”

I glance back to the table at Leo, my hands rummaging through a stale-scented box. Before I can respond, my throat tightens from inhaling the musty air, and makes a painful wheeze. I don’t want my father stopping his work on the Synth to tend to me again, so I clutch a handful of dark garments from the box and partly-set, mostly-drop it to the ground.

“What are you doing?” he asks, one of his eyebrows raising in dramatic puzzlement as I bring the black shirt and navy sweatpants over to him.

“When he wakes up, he’s not gonna like if he’s naked, is he?” I say pointedly. “Unless you really need these?”

He shakes his head, but I am afraid he might be cross with me for taking the liberty of going through his clothes and offering them to this strange, broken synthetic. Before I can stuff them back into their box, he grabs them out of my hands. “You most definitely take after Mattie,” he said, a smirk rising in his cheek.

I smile as well, although it is weak. I honestly would rather make more of a study on the aspects of myself that take after him. The parts of myself that don’t fit in this world. Especially the parts that I’m using to repair the loose wires in the Synth’s hands. I may have never met an actual synthetic, but I’ve read enough about them to understand that the hands are some of the most important features. Motor skills, tactile interaction, and other basic human requirements were transferred to their robotic counterpart by design, along with a jumpstart trigger in one of the fingers. I call it the “charging finger,” as trite as that sounds, because it will twitch up and down while they are connected to a power source.

With our patient repaired at eighty-five percent battery life, Leo thought it as good a time as any to run a test and began unplugging various cables.

“How did you get your hands on the consciousness code?” I ask him, sealing the surgical scar on the Synth’s hand with a dab of silicone glue.

Not answering right away, he pushes an unruly black curl off his forehead, then frowns at the sight of blue spattered all over the hand he’s just used. “I figured it out. Took lots of trips back home, raiding my father’s office for research. It took me a year.”

Such perseverance…only a personal tragedy could drive it. I can’t ask him about it yet – it feels strange still, when he seems uncomfortable around me. Besides, it’s time to let his effort speak for himself. It’s time to wake the dead.

Once the Synth is clothed, Leo’s fingers begin striking his computer keys like he’s Beethoven performing the 5th Symphony. Each click hits a raw nerve, subtle enough at first but then it occurs to me what is wrong: the light in the shed is sparking like lightning.

“Dad,” I say loudly. “You have to stop!”

“One second,” he says, his back facing me. He finishes uploading the code and spins around. He sees me first, but his attention immediately switches to the unmoving Synth. The lightbulb over us flickers faintly, then resumes a stable glow. I keep my eye on it; I don’t trust it.

Leo is unconcerned. He stares at the body on the table, no more alive than a cadaver at the morgue. “I don’t understand,” he says. But of course he does. The consciousness code was only meant to work on a living Synth.

I hate intruding on his loss, really. Yet I say suddenly, “Do you have anyplace we can go til daybreak?”

His look towards me is painfully incredulous. “Why do you ask?”

I point above us – just as the light bulb _tings_ with the sound of sparks hitting the coil. Blinded by the dark, I hear Leo’s voice swearing – it seems louder now, with nothing in sight to distract from the sound.

“Right,” he says at last, sharp with reluctance. “You probably need to go home. I’ll drive you back to…” He’s waiting for an address.

I sigh. This will likely be the last I see of him, at least for awhile. I give him the address in Bristol, and we stumble through the shed looking for the rope that ties the door down. As we work to untie everything, Leo says abruptly, “Y’know, I am sorry we had to meet like this. I was planning…well, hoping, that when time came, we’d do this right and you’d get to know Niska and Max and see other Synthetics.”

Niska and Max…my mother told me of the synthetic siblings my grandfather had built for him. There were four conscious prototypes, the other ones being Fred and Mia. Fred was left behind, his self-control compromised by a generically evil scientist that wanted to destroy David Elster’s work. But Mia…what happened to her?

And the question of who Leo wishes to bring back to life with the consciousness code is answered. I clear my throat, back in the present. “I have this…she’s in my classes. She wants to advocate for Synthetics.”

“I’m sure her parents are very proud,” he replies, his tone droll.

What more can I say about Veronica? _She’s a Leo Elster fangirl, I’d love to introduce you because –_

“I really like her. I was wondering -.”

 My words are interrupted by the clank of a chain – Leo is finally able to open the shed. When we gaze ahead into town, the black coated sky is dawning with stardust and periwinkle. He looks at me now, our heads under the threshold.

“I’m no good at this,” he admits softly. “Mat – your mother, and I – we weren’t ever really together. I don’t know how to be there for either of you any more than I did then.”

It’s hard to swallow, but I do. I can’t force him beyond his capabilities. “I just want to know you, that’s all.”

A curious expression sweeps over his face, and I wonder if I am again taking after my mother.

I don’t know what I am about to say; it hardly matters, because the rattle of fallen tools landing on the floor makes us both turn around.

“Rats,” hisses Leo.

I never saw any rats. Instead, I now see a silhouette approach us, with a pair of small green torches burning right at our eye level.

With part of me wanting to run away, and the other part wanting to leap forward, I shake with nerves. “Hello?”

“Hello,” replies the faint, even voice. “My name is Kenneth. Why have you brought me back?”

Slack-jawed, Leo and I share a glance. He’s done it. He’s bloody done it, and this might be it. The beginning to the end of the war.


End file.
